Study Task 01: Triangulation Exercise

Laura Mulvey - Visual Pleasure and Other Narrative Cinema.

Harvard Reference.

Mulvey, L (2009 [1975]) 'Visual Pleasure and Other Narrative Cinema,' In: 'Visual and Other Pleasures,' Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.

Key Facts about Mulvey. 

• Is a British feminist and film theorist.
• Educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford.
• Talks/writes from a feminist position/viewpoint.
• Is a scholar of film, worked for the BFI (British Film Institute) and now lectures as a Professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck, University of London. 
• Has interest in psychoanalysis and Freudian/Lacanianism theory and its use as a political weapon.
• Has been awarded/has achieved high qualifications (Doctorates).
• Mulvey's most famous piece is the essay 'Visual Pleasure and Other Narrative Cinema' which was originally written in 1973 and published in the Oxford University journal 'Screen' in 1975 (an important time for the women's liberation movement fighting for equal rights and sexual equality) before being republished alongside a more extensive body of work in 'Visual and Other Pleasures' in 2009.
• Is also an avant-garde film maker.

Themes within the text.

• Scopophilia (freudian term relating to visual pleasure and the act of looking good) in relation to film and audiences.
• How people relate to culture and how culture reflects society and its structures/social inequalities.
• Women as sexualised objects, incidental to film itself. How women are objectified both on and off screen, used merely as a sexual symbols on screen for the purpose of the audience exclusively with no relevance to story/plot.
• Views of Budd Boetticher.
• Patriarchy. The male as active and the female as passive (cultural system of organisation). 
• To-be-looked-at-ness.

Key Quotes 

 In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. (Mulvey, L. 2009 [1975] p19)

'What counts is what the heroin provokes, or rather what she represents. She is the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does. In herself the woman is not the slightest importance.' (Boetticher, Mulvey 2009 [1975] p20)

'Traditionally, the woman displayed has functioned on two levels: as erotic object for the characters within the screen story and as erotic object for the spectator within the auditorium, with a shifting tension between the looks on either side of the screen.' (Mulvey, L 2009 [1975] p20)

'According to the principles of the ruling ideology and the psychical structures that back it up, the male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification.' (Mulvey, L 2009 [1975] p20)

 'The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly.' (Mulvey 2009 [1975]:19)

John Storey - Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction.

Harvard Reference

Storey, J (2006). Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction. Georgia: University of Georgia Press. 81-83.

Key Facts about Storey.

• Storey is Professor of Cultural Studies and Director of the Centre for Research in Media and Cultural Studies, University of Sunderland, UK. 
• He is also a visiting professor at the universities of Henan and Wuhan in China. 
• He has published widely in cultural studies, including nine books. 
• His work has been translated into Chinese,German, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Slovene, Spanish, Swedish, Turkishand Ukrainian. 

Themes within the text.

• Scopophilia (freudian term relating to visual pleasure and the act of looking good) in relation to film and audiences.
• Popular Culture.
• Cultural theory.

Key Quotes

'In a world structured by 'sexual inbalance', the pleasure of the gaze has been separated into two distinct positions: men look and women exhibit 'to-be-looked-at-ness'- both playing to and signifying male desire. Women are therefore crucial to the desire of the (male) gaze.' (Storey, [2001] p82) 

'...often leads to the erotic look of the spectator no longer being borne by the look of the male protagonist; producing moments of pure erotic spectacle as the camera holds the female body (often focusing on particular parts of the body) for the unmediated erotic look of the spectator.' (Storey, [2001] p83) 

'Popular Cinema is structured around two moments: moments of narrative and moments of spectacle. The first is associated with the active male, the second with the passive female.  (Storey, [2001] p82) 

'The male spectator fixes his gaze on the hero ('the bearer of the look') to satisfy ego formation, and through the hero to the heroine ('the erotic look'), to satisfy libido.' (Storey, [2001] p82-83) 

Richard Dyer - Stars.

Harvard Reference.

Dyer, R. (1979) Stars. London: Educational Advisory Service, British Film Institute. 187-191.

Key Facts about Dyer.

• Dyer is an English academic currently holding a professorship in the Department of Film Studies at King's College London. 
• He specialises in cinema, particularly Italian cinema, queer theory, and the relationship between entertainment and representations of race, sexuality, and gender.
• He was previously a faculty member of the Film Studies Department at the University of Warwick for many years.
• Has held a number of visiting professorships in the United Kingdom, the United States, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany.

Themes within the text.

Critical and theoretical approaches to the phenomenon of stardom.

Key Quotes 

'While films do construct positions which limit how they may be understood and interpreted, moviegoers also respond actively as individuals producing a diversity of responses.' (Dyer 1979: 187).

'Male characters on film are made obviously threatening and aggressive in order to avert their erotic potential.' (Dyer 1979: 188).

'Male pin-ups appear in the image to be looking in ways which suggest they are not an erotic object.' (Dyer 1979: 188).

Triangulation

Film scholar Laura Mulvey is most famed for her critically acclaimed essay 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative in Cinema,’ originally written in 1973 and published in the Oxford University journal 'Screen' in 1975 (an important time for the women's liberation movement fighting for equal rights and sexual equality) before being republished alongside a more extensive body of work in 'Visual and Other Pleasures' in 2009.

The essay arguably provides an obvious viewpoint from the perspective of feminist psychoanalysis through her analysis of the patriarchal structures of not only the film industry, but culture as a whole as she delves into the roles of active males and passive females within a society plagued with inequality and stereotype. 

Mulvey dissects the Freudian ideologies regarding scopiophilia (the act of taking pleasure in looking at something) in relation to film and its audiences. Speaking of this, she states 'In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female.' (Mulvey 2009 [1975]: p19) Her statement suggests that women are exploited as sexualised objects, incidental to film itself, objectified both on and off screen and used as mere sexual symbols for the purpose of the male audience exclusively with no relevance to story/plot — stripping away their identity and condemning them to being slaves of erotica for the soul purpose of male pleasure.

This view is shared by Professor of Cultural Studies and Director of the Centre for Research in Media and Cultural Studies (University of Sunderland, UK) John Storey in his book ‘Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction’ (Storey, 2006). Here, he too attempts to examine scopiophilia —claiming that 'in a world structured by 'sexual imbalance,’ the pleasure of the gaze has been separated into two distinct positions: men look and women exhibit ‘to-be-looked-at-ness,’ both playing to and signifying male desire. Women are therefore crucial to the desire of the (male) gaze' (Storey 2001:82). This perspective amplifies Mulvey’s viewpoint while reinforcing the evident and apparent gender inequality featured in film. 

In addition to the abundance of evident gender inequality Mulvey and Storey concern themselves with in their texts, English academic and professor in the Department of Film Studies at King's College London Richard Dyer also notes in his book 'Stars' (Dyer. 1979)  that 'male characters on film are made obviously threatening and aggressive in order to avert their erotic potential' and that 'male pin-ups appear in the image to be looking in ways which suggest they are not an erotic object.' (Dyer 1979: 188). While Dyer's view initially seems to be parallel to those of Mulvey and Storey, he also argues that 'while films do construct positions which limit how they may be understood and interpreted, moviegoers also respond actively as individuals producing a diversity of responses.' (Dyer 1979: 187). This view is perhaps most applicable to the present day, in which the male form is used increasingly as a means to engage and provide for the female gaze and the successes in the fight for sexual equality become ever-more present within society and culture.